Dnia 2013-04-09, o godz. 16:51:47 Matthew Jones <bsdmatb...@gmail.com> napisał(a):
> On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 4:27 PM, Marcin Borkowski > <mb...@wmi.amu.edu.pl> wrote: > > > I see. OTOH, one argument *against* a database (as opposed to > > parsing text files) might be exactly preserving the formatting etc. > > of files (of course, with all the syncing stuff this is not > > important anyway). > > > > Certainly at the beginning it was easier to rely on our file parser > and we tried to stick with that for as long as we could because in > some ways it is just easier! We ran into some really nasty problems > as we went along, though, and the further we got into our desired > feature list the worse it became simply relying on that file parser. > I was initially very skeptical about going the database route but it > is easily one of the best decisions we have made with regard to > refactoring of the project and it has enabled some of the great > features we have today. I believe, though can't see it myself. (Just wondering though: now that the official Org-mode syntax exists, does it change anything in this department?) > > That's interesting. I would be very glad to learn what might the > > pitfalls of "just overwriting files" be; it may be the case that > > "just overwriting" would work well with *my personal* use pattern of > > Org-mode, and that would be why I don't understand MobileOrg's > > approach. > > > So imagine this... in the morning you synchronize you org files to > your mobile device but then make a change in one of those files and > forget to push it up to your mobile. Later in the day you make a > change to the same node, or even somewhere else in the file while on > your mobile device and then push that file up. In the evening you > get back to your computer running emacs and pull your remote changes > in. What do you want to happen? Should the one still on your > computer that you last changed this morning take precedence? or the > one on the mobile device? The answer is probably that you want to > merge those changes... that is something that emacs can do, but as is > the case with most patch-work it can't always do that in automated > fashion. That's why the org-mobile-* functions exist. Now it can be > argued that there is a better way and I'd probably agree with that > statement but it's not an easy problem to solve. > > Here's another case... if you are editing a file in emacs and the file > changes outside of emacs what happens? emacs doesn't like it at > all... so you need some sort of built in emacs mechanism for being > able to merge changes in a safe way, and it needs to not surprise the > user when that's happening. > > These are the kinds of issues we are all struggling to solve in one > way or another but the general consensus is that "just overwriting" > is the worst of the possible options, even if it is technically the > easiest. I see now. Since I'm using Dropbox to synchronize, and it works more or less transparently and instantaneously, that seems to be a no-issue for me. But I agree that not all people are in this situation, and maybe even I'm in a minority. > > * Yes, I did uninstall, but I've reinstalled MobileOrg again after > > reading this thread. I'll try to set it up again. I installed > > from the Google Play; is it better to use the github repo? It says > > "0.9.7" in the release notes on the wiki, Google Play says it's > > 0.9.8, and maybe it would be better to use master or even 0.9.10 > > (looking at the branches on github)? Where do I find the info > > about installing the bleeding edge version from github on my phone > > (I'm quite new to Android, as I mentioned.) > > Google Play is always up to date... usually we'll only post an updated > changeset on github if something major has changed, if it's just a > bug fix then you probably won't see it mentioned. If you can't > access Google play, as mentioned in the wiki, you can always find the > latest and past release here: > > http://matburt.net/files/MobileOrg/ OK, so I'll stick with Google Play version, at least for now. > > * I did not leave a one-star review; I guess I'm too lazy for that, > > but also it would be a bit unfair without further investigation of > > my problems. > > I didn't mean to suggest that you personally did... but it happens a Of course, but I wanted to stress that anyway;). > lot more than I wish it did. We also get faulted a lot for the > perception of complexity of the way the we have to handle > synchronization but as I've mentioned above... it's a little more > complex than just pushing the files to the device or pulling them off > the device. That's a very general problem. People want software (and in fact, everything) to Just Work™ without any effort. I guess many of us have tons of sad stories confirming this... > > * I am very busy these days, but I'll try hard to start using > > MobileOrg and (if the problems I had persist), I'll try to report > > them on MobileOrg's mailing list. In fact, my problems were > > twofold: firstly, syncing didn't "Just Work™" (sometimes I got > > errors on MobileOrg, sometimes in Emacs), and some of the UI > > choices *did* suck. As soon as I find some time, I'll try to > > describe exactly what I mean by this, so that either it could get > > improved or I could get convinced that it's my usage that sucks > > (which is obviously possible, especially given my lack of > > experience). > > Yep... the only way we know that it "sucks" is if people tell us what > sucks about it. UI/UX has been an iterative process where we have to > take feedback from our users. It's a real challenge to build a UI > that works for the most people and we want to make the most people > happy. Of course. As I said earlier, I can't remember now, but I'll do my best to come back in some time with a detailed report. I'll treat this as a way to pay back the community for the great tool;). (Though I'll still consider buying the "donate" version - but for that, I'll have to configure the payment options on my phone, and I won't do it very soon.) Best regards, -- Marcin Borkowski http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski Adam Mickiewicz University
